Tag Archives: Signature Event

When I first heard that Pulitzer Prize winning journalists BOB WOODWARD and CARL BERNSTEIN were speaking at Hofstra this year, I could barely believe it. Ever since playing such pivotal roles in America’s presidential earthquake in the 1970’s, they’ve been investigative reporting rockstars, and I was going to see them!

Four decades earlier….

Riding past the Watergate Hotel in 1973, during the summer I spent job hunting in Washington, DC, I stared at the curved buildings as if enough willpower would summon a recreation of the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters there the year before.

In 1974 President Nixon resigned after investigations spearheaded by Washington Post journalists BOB WOODWARD and CARL BERNSTEIN revealed break-in cover-up attempts that led all the way to the White House. And in 1976 the Academy Award-winning movie based on their non-fiction book All the President’s Men vividly brought to life the events that both brought down a president and profoundly altered the perception of the institution of the American presidency.

Forty years later, on March 20, 2012, Woodward and Bernstein spoke about the Watergate legacy at Hofstra University, which the Commission on Presidential Debates chose as the site of its October 16, 2012 Presidential Debate.

It was to be the first of a long series of outstanding Hofstra Debate 2012 Signature Events – all open and free to the public – that I covered this year. Talk about setting the bar high!